My father used to say to me, 'The only limit to your success is your own imagination.' I actually believed that - like, I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I might not be an Olympic figure skater.
Coach Skiles is tough. He's been my only coach in the NBA, so I'm used to it. His rules are a little different at times. At the end of the day, he just wants you to play hard defense, and you can't fault him for that.
When I was a playwright earlier in my career - my senior project in high school was my first produced play - I used to put on the title page: 'A tragedy with laughs.'
In 1961, the United States began chemical warfare in Vietnam, South Vietnam, chemical warfare to destroy crops and livestock. That went on for seven years. The level of poison - they used the most extreme carcinogen known: dioxin. And this went on for years.
I was once so terrified of acting that I used to pretend I was ill to get out of drama.
I think people are sort of waking up to it now, how probably the biggest change in Internet media isn't the immediacy of it, or the low costs, but the measurability. Which is actually terrifying if you're a traditional journalist, and used to pushing what people ought to like, or what you think they ought to like.
Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.
My father was very interested in music, and when he and his brothers were young, they had a singing group that used to open for Sam Cooke. There was always music in our house, but there wasn't much art around.
No one knew me until I met my wife Lulu. Lulu's mother used to ask, Which one is Maurice? For six months she thought Lulu was dating Barry.
My dad used to call me 'the human pretzel' because I was able to bend my body, and because my legs are very long.
We took a plant that was being closed by a big company thinking there was no good use for it, and we came in with a different perspective. We bought some used equipment, as simple as we could.
At school I was easily misled, but that's childhood. I remember I used to shoplift tins of Airfix paint and football badges.
I started working out with my mom in 4th grade. She used to take me to the track.
Our world is evolving without consideration, and the result is a loss of biodiversity, energy issues, congestion in cities. But geography, if used correctly, can be used to redesign sustainable and more livable cities.
I am a football player. I like to win. And I am used to winning - quite a lot.
I used to worry a lot. I still worry a lot, but not about the things that I used to worry about because my younger self, I didn't regret anything that I ever did... I was happy, and I was free, and I was living it up.
I used to be on dance team in high school; it was called drill team in Texas. And when I started doing theater sophomore year, I had to make a decision which thing I was gonna follow. It was a big shift because I sort of had all these friends on dance squad, and when I started to do theater, my whole identity shifted.
There is hard hitting, but the hitting is not nearly as hard as it used to be.
I find it interesting that 16-year-olds are having plastic surgery. People in their 40s used to think, 'I'm aging, I have to do something about it.' Now children are deciding they don't like the way they look.
As a kid, I used to love to play baseball and be in Little League and sleep outside with my friends and do all those kind of things.
I don't want to give advice to people about their religious beliefs, but I do think that it's not smart to bet against the power of science to figure out the natural world. It used to be, a thousand years ago, that if you wanted to explain why the moon moved through the sky, you needed to invoke God.
If technology and medicine are used by women to have children or not to have children or to have healthier children - that's one thing. But if it's used to say, 'You're not a real woman unless you have a child; therefore, take all these dangerous hormones and have one at 54,' then it's another story.
There are a lot of bands that my parents used to go see that I haven't necessarily heard of, and asking them to dig up stuff like that is a really fun way to discover music.
I can assure you that I have never used my media companies for propaganda, and I will never do so.
When I was a baby, my mom used to have a dance school, and she used to teach classes there. We didn't have money for a babysitter, so she always brought me with her to the dancing school. Back then, I was already watching and listening to Michael Jackson for a long time.
I used to play rugby, polo, tennis, and cricket in school. It was only in the 1990s, when I used to live just opposite Harrods in London, that I started putting on weight. I used to have my breakfast there every day.
I miss the reference section at the library. I used to go there twice a week on missions. Now everywhere's a research library and I can't get an elitist kick from it any more.
It is immoral from almost any point of view to refuse to defend yourself and others from very grave and terrible threats, even as there are limits to the means that can be used in such defense.
I used to listen to a lot of music in my studio - all the time. But as far as the music that interplays with my work, what I've done and still do is keep a lyric book and song title. The material typically comes from Eartha Kitt, Betty Davis, Donna Summer, Whitney Houston.
The Klan had used fear, intimidation and murder to brutally oppress over African-Americans who sought justice and equality and it sought to respond to the young workers of the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the same way.
Used to be, conservatives revered the Average American, that Norman Rockwell oil painting of diner food, humble faith, honest toil, and Capraesque virtue.
Because the Internet's there, I have access to a lot of the legends, like Fela Kuti. I used to watch a lot of Fela Kuti videos, just to see how he performed. He inspired me a lot, actually, because he was a man of many words, many good words.
Bernard Herrmann used to write all his scores by himself. So did Bach, Beethoven and Stravinsky. I don't understand why this happens in the movie industry.
My father and my uncle used to be amateur monologuists because their generation grew up with Henry Irving and the like, and they had that style of delivery, of declamation: 'The Belllllls!' What we call 'ham' now, larger than life.
Dressing up used to be more of a thing. My dad wore a suit always. Now you think, why bother?
When I meet people for the first time, I'm friendly but shy. I'm much less outwardly nervous than I used to be, but I still get anxious sometimes.